Page 43 of Another Chance
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Some guys were just gluttons for punishment, and Eric didn’t have any illusions about himself. He knew that he fell firmly into that column, at least when it came to Theo.
It was Theo’s birthday, though. How could he let that go by without saying something? Most likely, Theo wouldn’t even notice, with the sheer flood of people he was getting sending him birthday greetings.
He had to, though. It was the same urge that had him thinking about what Faith had said, that she would take Liam to the Roadhouse and get him a room. Theo had to be there, too, didn’t he? There weren’t exactly a million places to stay in a tiny place like Fall City. So much could have happened since he’d last seen Theo.
Theo and Liam had probably reunited, and Eric knew he should be angry about it. He even was, a little, but mostly, he was just deeply depressed by the whole thing. He’d even been doing his drinking at home, so as to avoid running into Liam or Theo or both, both would be much, much worse, at the Roadhouse.
Luckily, his friends, his crew, and even Faith had come to visit him at home. He hadn’t been alone, and he knew he was one lucky guy because a lot of people would have given up on him. Faith had been the most persistent, and one night, while drunk, he’d told her everything. The whole sorry story.
He regretted it, but at the same time, well, it had been nice to get it all out.
It was after work, nearing twilight on the day when, twenty-five years earlier exactly, Theo had been born. The man was even more on his mind than ever, and when Eric drove toward his house and saw that tall, slender form perched on the swing in front of his house, he legitimately thought, at first, that he was having some sort of hallucination.
Eric had been at his house every night. Anytime from about five minutes after Theo had left for that last time, Eric would have been willing to take him back. But he just didn’t have it in him to make himself that damn pathetic for Theo again. He couldn’t make himself go down to the Roadhouse and try to find him, only to find that maybe he’d just gone right back to New York after all. Or to see him sitting with Liam, laughing, sharing stories and inside jokes and all of those things which couples seemed to do.
God, but the thought of Theo being a part of a couple that had nothing to do with Eric hurt him. That was the reason that he had refused to have anything to do with the restoration of Theo’s house. He’d left it all to Carlos because he didn’t have it in him to watch Theo being happy with someone else.
His heart bled as he looked at Theo, and there was no question, from the moment that he saw him and realized that he was real, that he was actually there, about what Eric was going to do.
There hadn’t been any question for a long time, no matter how stupid it was that Eric kept allowing Theo to have all of this power over him.
Theo didn’t say anything. He just stood there with this look on his face, a look which Eric had never seen there before and didn’t even know how to start to interpret. It was like something behind Theo’s eyes had been unshuttered, and for the first time since they were kids, really little kids, Eric saw who his Teddy really was.
It hurt. It made his heart ache, but not like he might have thought. It was rather like having surgery to pull out something which had lodged deep inside of him, and now, that thing was gone, and he could heal. It was the hurt of healing, of finally being able to move on, and not only from the fact that Theo had run from him but also because of the eight years they had spent apart.
So he invited Theo in. Knowing full well that he was, for the third time, putting himself out there, leaving himself open in case Theo decided to hurt him again, he let Theo into his house once more and gave him the chance to do it all over again. No one else had even gotten one shot at hurting him, but he gave it to Theo with just a look from him.
“Eric, Faith said that you’re not with her,” Theo’s voice even sounded a little bit different, more free, more open. In some way, his Teddy had found peace, and that radiated out from him with every word he spoke.
“Yeah, Faith talks too damn much,” Eric grumbled, and then he turned to the one man who meant everything to him. “Damn it! You son of a bitch, even if you did think I was fucking her twice a day that doesn’t mean …”
His hands were balled up into fists, holding the fabric of Theo’s shirt, and he had Theo shoved against a wall. How had that happened, any of it? He looked up into Theo’s eyes, a little bit ashamed of his outburst of temper, and sure that Theo would yell back at him, but it didn’t happen.
“It doesn’t mean what? Talk, Eric,” Theo ordered, his voice gentle, but firm. “There’s been too many problems between us because we didn’t talk any of this out.”
Eric tried to let him go, but it was like his hands had seized in place, and he couldn’t force his fingers to release their grip. Or maybe, just maybe, it was a huge relief to get to touch Theo again, no matter how it came about. Even in anger, the love burned too close to the surface.
“It doesn’t matter,” Eric muttered, and a look of frustration crossed Theo’s features.
“It does so,” Theo protested. “It matters. I saw you and Faith together the first night I got back. I saw her come up here with you, and I saw you leave with her in the morning. I made assumptions. I thought you were with her, that I was helping you cheat and it pissed me off.”
Eric winced and pulled away, as much as he could while still holding Theo against the wall. It was very strange, how Theo wasn’t fighting back. When they’d wrestled as kids, Eric had always won, but Theo had gotten pretty huge since that time.
He could, if he wanted to, but he didn’t.
“I was drunk. Faith slept on the couch.” Eric felt the words being drawn out of him by the force of Theo’s compassion, by the affection he could feel coming from the other man. “You son of a bitch. You’re a hypocrite, accusing me of sleeping with her when you were dating that Liam guy the whole time.”
Anger raced through him, followed closely by shame, both of them mingling into a potent combination which left Eric shaking. He looked into that handsome face and tried to hate this man, he really did. But that was something that he had never been able to do, no matter how hurt he’d gotten.
“Eric,” Theo reached up with both hands, and they rested on Eric’s hips, blisteringly hot, seemingly searing him right through the fabric. “Eric, I broke up with Liam more than a month ago. Long before I came to town.”
Theo was lying. He had to be. Only for whatever else he could say about Theo, whatever flaws the other man had, he had never been a liar. All of a sudden the world whirled around him nauseatingly, and he felt like, if not for Theo’s hands on his waist, he might have actually fallen over.
“What?” Eric moved his numb lips over the word, barely hearing anything over the roar of his own blood in his veins.
“I love you,” Theo whispered, his voice thick with his own emotions. “Damn it, Eric, I love you. I loved you when you kissed me all those years ago, and it terrified me. I loved you for eight years when we didn’t talk, and because of it I could never fall in love with anyone else, even when I thought it was a good idea.”
